Betty Crocker, Eat Your Heart Out!

So Mark finally made it here safe and sound! Woohoo! And with him came all of my lovely possessions that I had been missing for the last two months! I mean it, I have some nice stuff that I really enjoy being able to use! And since we had originally anticipated it only being two weeks before I got my stuff I had not brought as much variety of things with me!! So needless to say I've been genuinely enjoying opening boxes and getting re-acquainted with my things! And as anyone who knows me will say, I have ALOT of things. The two largest categories of stuff would be books and kitchen stuff. Now since I have invested in the amazing Amazon Kindle I've been working to transfer my larger number of books to electronic versions, right now I'm up to about 165 books on my Kindle!! And love it!! But that's for another post because I seriously should be a salesperson for Kindle's.
On the other hand, I have been working to stock my kitchen since I was in high school! I seriously could not wait for the time when I would have a kitchen of my own to fill! My mom's kitchen took a serious hit the day I moved out haha! And since I have finally been reunited with my many boxes of kitchen stuff it has been heaven! It is seriously the only room in the apartment we have totally unpacked! That is mostly due to the fact that we really haven't bought furniture yet, so there are no dressers for clothes, book cases for my many books, dvd stands for our many movies....you get the picture. But we have been blessed with an amazing kitchen! Seriously it's the best one I've had yet and I've had 5 kitchens! It's large, it's got TONS of cupboards/drawers, there is miles of counters, and plenty of storage in our laundry room for all the many things I own!! So naturally the first thing I wanted to do was break it in! And so I did! For work we were going to be leaving ridiculously (5am!! which is insanely early for me!) to go to an event in Little Rock, and if I have to be up at 5am than there had better be some serious sugar involved!! So I made cinnamon rolls!! And they turned out fabulously and I seriously became the most popular person that morning when I showed up to carpool with enough cinnamon rolls for everyone!!mmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!! haha

Well after giving everyone a taste of my cinnamon rolls I asked what they would enjoy trying next! Because my baking bug had seriously bitten! I think they might have been teasing just a little when they asked for donuts but luckily for everyone involved I happen to have an amazing recipe for donuts from someone from high school! So Monday morning I rolled in with homemade donuts!! Sadly I forgot to take a picture of them and they were gone by lunchtime!! A couple days later I was lucky enough to have been home by 6pm, which considering I ended up working almost 60hrs that week is amazing!!  So of course I made an apple pie haha cause who wouldn't do that when they get home early!! For those of you who haven't had my dutch apple pie you are seriously missing out, because I honestly think it is the best thing I make!! And Wal-Mart was nice enough to stock MI apples for me! HAHA  the pie was also a hit and that works for me because this holiday season I'm looking to make some extra cash by selling my pies to people who don't want to bake their own for the holidays and word of mouth is my best possible advertisement! Sadly I also forgot to take a picture of the finished pie, but trust me when I say it was YUMMY!! Tonight I just got done making banana bread to take in tomorrow, since I didn't work today *benefit of a 60hr week last week is a comp day today!

I've honestly figured that if money was no issue I would live in a town, with a thriving downtown community (hm like Holland haha) and own a small pie shop. Just serve different kinds of pies and coffee/tea just a casual cool hang out with awesome pies! That's honestly like my dream. But since I'm not likely to win the lottery *since I don't play it haha* I'll just content myself with baking yummy treats and sharing them with work, and maybe selling a few on the side. Someday when Mark and I own our bed and breakfast I'll be stoked to take care of all the baking there!

Oh Baby

My own design

So it's been a pretty exciting last couple weeks for baby's in the family/friends. My cousin and his wife gave birth to their son a couple days before my birthday! He's adorable, my cousin's wife is short like me and my cousin is, well a giant, so she's an absolute champ to even want to have kids with someone like that! And they made an adorable little boy! Other baby news is two friends of ours from Holland also gave birth to a boy a couple days after my birthday...apparently no one wanted to share my birthday with me haha which is good cause these boys are two cute they'd totally overshadow my birthday.... I love my birthday if you hadn't noticed! Anyways our friends ended up going in for c-section and gave birth a few weeks early so their boy is still in the hospital, but lots of people are praying for him and I know he'll be fine soon and home with his great parents! It's very exciting, because I love babies! Especially now that I've discovered my love of quilting baby blankets!!! I'll post pictures of the one's I've done so far, after they've been given to their owners since I don't want to ruin the surprise! But I have got this picture of one I'm working on right now that I'm not sure where it's going to go.

My cupcake!!

So speaking of my birthday!! It was a pretty good day, which actually started with the perfect weekend cause my mommy came and visited me! I got up and went to work and there was a cupcake and card from the other people in my office! Which was ridiculously nice if you ask me, but of course I'd been telling everyone for a week that it was going to be my birthday haha so I don't think it was possible they'd forget.

Add caption

So I got to enjoy a yummy chocolate cupcake, and someone else brought in blueberry cake in to the kitchen, but I don't know who there was just a note on it saying Happy Birthday Nicole. I was very touched by the card to because everyone signed it, little things really make me smile!! So while I was working hard on making Girl Scouts available to girls everywhere in Northwest Arkansas, my wonderful, amazing, awesome, fabulous, sweet,
 kind, smart, clever, creative husband had flowers delivered to me!! and they were beautiful! And not only that, my above mentioned husband had them specially designed and wrote me exactly what they meant! Of course I'm keeping that part private because it was to amazing to share with ya'll, but just now I got the best husband in the world! After that I had leftovers from my mom's wonderful dinner she made me for lunch, and went back to work, I had an event up in Pea Ridge which is near the Missouri border and my wonderful team of volunteers there signed up 32 girls for Girl Scouts!! it was a great event, that ran like clockwork! My volunteer up there has been a leader for 17 years!! That's dedication and I'm always amazed by the work she puts into this program and she does it without getting paid! While working a full time job and have a house built by Habitat for Humanity! I love my volunteers! I couldn't do my job without them, and I tell them that a  lot!

So I'm getting really excited because my husband will be getting here in like a week, maybe a little less! It's going to be so nice to see him! We're getting to good at being apart and I don't like that at all! Sadly that weekend I have to go to Little Rock for a work thing :-( but we're getting two movers for two hours to help unload the truck on Friday. And when I get home Saturday night I'll have all my stuff and my hubby, life is good!
So that's about it for now, I'll have more posts later about other stuff that's still percolating in my brain, but I'm good for now :-) and in honor of the adorable little boys that have graced the world with their presence I'm posting these two pictures of these adorable outfits mom and I found at the mall when she was down, (plus they really helped get her on my side about wanting boys ;-D)

Plaid is ADORABLE!! And the shoes match!

Little Carhart! Come on how cute!

Adoption Meeting

So last night I went to the adoption/foster care orientation meeting here in Fayetteville....I still don't quite know how I feel about it other than I certainly miss our Bethany caseworker! I did not get the most welcoming and inviting feeling last night, and maybe it was because I was highly disappointed with the thoughts/actions of the other people in the meeting that colored the experience for me but it just didn't feel right. On top of that I guess the process here is equally easier and harder than back in Michigan. There are physically less children in the system here which makes the process longer. I was more intrigued by the idea of foster care though.
The process works along the same lines here as in Michigan in that we'd go through the initial application/background check/fingerprinting than move on to the classroom training and finish with the home-study. But because the system here does not get contracted out from the beginning our initial application would be done by one person, training by an outside contract, and finally home-study done by a third person. I don't really know how I feel about that, I take back everything I said about MI contracting out the whole process to BCS! I would love to have just one person who'll be there with us from start to finish like in Michigan and not feel like I'm playing hot-potato with a bunch of different caseworkers all of whom have way to high a caseload to care about us individually......like I said I was just not overcome with love for the whole thing last night.
That being said we aren't taking adoption off the table, but even if we were to jump headlong into the process again it would be up to 2 years before we could even get a placement and I don't know how I feel about that. I mean heck pregnant people only have to wait 9 months why do I have to wait 2 years! I am just feeling very discouraged about the whole thing right now. One thing I forgot to mention in my review of Hannah's Hope was the discussion of how mothering doesn't have to just mean having a child. I love to volunteer and spend time with kids anyways so does that mean God has a plan for us to make a difference in the lives of children through some other way? I don't know right now, all I know is I am not a patient person and I really have to work on that.
I do know that I am definitely re-committed to my intentions not to take fertility treatments to an extreme. Let me explain.....for Mark and I our fertility issues stem from my diagnosis with PCOS. Poly-cystic Ovarian Syndrome is something that causes the body, for whatever reason, to not ovulate. It is sorta a disease that doctors don't know a whole lot about. It may or may not be linked to genetics, there seems to be some connection to insulin levels though they don't know how, and women can be given a diagnosis of PCOS with or without actual cysts (I'm part of the lucky ones to actually have cysts woohoo lucky me...not). Like I've said before the irony with PCOS is that a lot of the symptoms can be managed with oral birth-control. It helps to stabilize weight, produce regular (or in my case semi-regular) ovulation, reduce mood issues, and just in general make life nicer.My doctor and I have been trying to find a weight that is best for me. If I weight to little I don't ovulate, if I weigh to much I don't ovulate. We haven't quite figured out what my ideal weight for getting pregnant is, but I know it's less than I weight now which is a whole other struggle for me. The part of the diagnosis that scares me the most is the higher chances for miscarriage. I know enough about myself to know I could not handle that physically or emotionally.

Sorry this is all a little random.....

There is more I want to talk about but right now my thoughts are kinda scattered, I think later this week I'll post a little more about what the infertility journey for Mark and I looks like, but for now I'm going to enjoy my long weekend, and try not to think about any of this.
Love you all

Hannah's Hope

I finished reading Hannah's Hope last night.......It was an excellent book and I highly recommend it to everyone. Not just people dealing with the pain of infertility, miscarriage, or adoption loss. There are excellent sections in this book called Burden Bearers which gives wonderful advice to people who interact with others who may be facing this issue. And considering that 1 in 6 American couples will face this problem, well you do the math, pretty easy to figure out that there is more than likely one or more couples in your life right now dealing with this. Some may not be as vocal about it as I am, but they are still there. The book follows along the story of Hannah, the mother of Samuel. The author takes the passages from the bible and infuses a story along with it to expand upon it based one her own experiences dealing with infertility. It was really my favorite part of the book because I so understood the feelings/thoughts that she had placed upon Hannah. Of course we will never know exactly what Hannah felt/thought through that time but given the importance of children in ancient Israel it is not hard to believe.
As I said at the end of each chapter there is the section called Burden Bearers, I think that was my second favorite part because it helped me to understand what I feel, and maybe how to help me verbalize that to 'normal' people. It also helped me to keep in perspective that people don't generally say or do things to be intentionally cruel, and I recognize the fact that I may take things a little to personally....no the woman at wal-mart is not intentionally pregnant just to hurt my feelings, no the cashier is not being cruel when she asks about how many kids I have when I'm purchasing stuff for the other children in my life, and no Mother's Day and Father's Day were not created to remind me we have no children! Being able to read Jennifer's personal journey with those same issues was something I was able to connect with, her stories of not being able to sit through a Mother's Day service at church, or the child dedications was eerie in the similarity to the struggle's Mark and I feel at those same occasions.
My only complaint about this book is that is came from a woman on the other side. Jennifer and her husband have successfully had two children and while I don't think it discredits her book, I would like to read something on fertility by someone who has never seen the otherside. I just started ready Baby Hunger and its the same thing the author dealt with years of struggle and now has two kids, where is the book by someone who dealt with years of infertility and never got to the otherside? I dunno. But Hannah's Hope is a wonderful book that everyone should read and I highly recommend it!

Possibilities

Mark and I (and by Mark and I, I mean I) made a decision to look into foster-adoptions here in Arkansas...........I had just planned on emailing the lady to just see what the differences would be from Michigan, what we could expect in Arkansas, etc. Just some basic information to think about. Instead she invites me to an orientation meeting that is tomorrow....This was earlier in the week, and my schedule was pretty set to have a Service Unit meeting tomorrow in Oklahoma. But somehow God had a plan for me to go because the same morning I was invited to the orientation I got an email from my Service Unit Director informing me the meeting was being pushed back to next week (which is a whole list of inconvenient for next week but I guess that's why God says to only worry about today).
SO now I'm going to the meeting tomorrow...just want to check it out. No pressure, no absolutes. Mark and I talked about it and decided that there is no reason not to check out the process, no reason not to get licensed. That way if we do decide to adopt we're ready to go without having to do the process at that point.
I haven't been able to stop thinking about adoption, I know we're in Arkansas and its a legitimate reason to push back from the adoption table, but it just hasn't felt right to me. If we were pregnant being in Arkansas wouldn't change anything, so why should it change our adoption? On the bright side I checked out the Michigan Adoption Resource Exchange website and was glad (and a little sad) to see that the girl we were interested in is no longer listed. It is a real relief to know that she found a home and I feel much less guilty about leaving.
So please, please, please, please, pray for us as we tentitively step back into the adoption arena! Like I said we have no immediate plans to adopt, we're just trying to be prepared (I am a Girl Scout after all and that is our motto! :-D). Pray we just keep trying to figure out God's will for our family, and that it all works out how it is supposed to, and that in particular I don't push to hard to get my way regardless of what is right for us or meant for us!
Love you all, and I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow!

A Hair Post :-)

As you may know if you've read my previous post I will be doing a fundraiser for St Baldricks and in November I'll be shaving my head to help raise money for cancer research! I'm super excited, and a bit nervous.

The post-shower, pre-dye picture at Wal Greens

Well earlier this year I made a decision to see if I could go a whole year without getting my hair cut (more than a trim) or dyeing my hair! I'm about 3-4 months into that test.....well tonight I failed miserably because I did both! But with good intentions. This is because after researching the requirements to donate my hair to the Pantene Beautiful Lengths campaign I found that my hair would not be acceptable. Mostly due to my love affair with hair dye.

Did blond earlier this year, didn't love it

I've been dyeing my hair for years, I think the first time was in 7th or 8th grade, and I've been pretty regular about it since....I've done quite a wide range of colors as well, going from blonde to dark brown to purple to auburn and just about every color in between. Dyeing my hair is something I do when I'm bored.

One of my favorites!

There is also a slight vanity to it because in my family people go gray/white very early.
My father had a streak of gray that was like a skunk streak. We all assumed my sister, who inherited our father's coloring and looks would get that lovely trait....well of course it didn't work like that. By the time I was 18 or 19 I was starting to get gray hairs in exactly the same spot while my sister (who's never dyed her hair) might just now be getting gray's! Well I've decided to give up my expensive habit entirely! Once my head is shaved and I never have to worry about my roots showing (which is a HUGE pet peeve of mine) I won't by dyeing my hair anymore! I just really hope if I do go gray/white I get lucky and it'll go quickly and be pretty like my grandma's hair!

My most common color

So this might not be the last time I dye my hair before November, I was paralyzed by the choices at Wal-Greens this afternoon and might want to revisit some of my favorite colors before I give up the habit!

Waiting for the goop to set

So today I chose dark brown, who knows what I'll do next. But I've set a limit I've got 8 weeks left to torture my hair with dye and then I'm done! If you haven't had a chance to check out my St Baldricks page check it out! I'm really excited, I told everyone at work about it (just wanted to make sure they knew so that when I show up to my department retreat a few days later I don't scare anyone) and my supervisor just said 'thanks for the heads up (haha get it)' so that was encouraging! My two co-workers that started with me were excited for me to and encouraged me to plan a big event in Fayetteville, which I'm still looking at, but might wait a bit longer just because I don't have nearly the connections or knowledge of the area yet! Well that's all for now, still reading Hannah's Hope and still really enjoying it, also had my first RedBox experience, and was a little disappointed with the lack of selection! I miss Family Video! So I ended up with Sherlock Holmes which I've seen a few times but always enjoy.

The finished product, and new bangs

"If even a virgin could give birth to a baby, I must really be in bad shapt."

So I'm reading a book called Hannah's Hope by Jennifer Saake. I'm almost halfway through it ( I started reading yesterday) and so far I've laughed, cried, and more often than I'd like to admit completely understood what the author has been through. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has gone through the infertility process, or dealt with miscarriage or lost adoption. Its been refreshing to read a book that so clearly deals with the things I've been through lately. But at the same time it has really confirmed in my mind that we will never go through extensive fertility treatments. I want a family more than anything, but I know that families can look like different things. Right now my family is a family of two. And that can be ok, hopefully my family will grow in the near future if possible. But if not I have to learn to be ok with that. It has definitely re-affirmed my desire to adopt out of the foster system. I almost feel selfish trying for a baby when SO MANY kids need a home that I can provide.  And part of me can't help but think how much easier my life would be if we stopped trying. The pain of month after month not conceiving is like a little knife that keeps twisting, added to that if I went back on an oral birth control a LOT of the symptoms of my PCOS would clear up and make my life much nicer on my body. And the irony that going on birth control would help ease the symptoms of the thing keeping me from getting pregnant is not lost on me!! Trust me! Anyways just wanted to let ya'll (hehe southern influences!) know about this book and once I finish it I will definitely post again on how I feel at the end of it.